Monday, December 13, 2010

Starbucks Can You Please Label Your Vegan Options?!

It’s a Starbucks morning because you stayed up too late finishing a PowerPoint and now you have two meetings before noon and you will need to stay engaged, or at least sound engaged. Because of course there’s nothing else you would rather be doing right now then dialing into the enterprise global conferencing system to hear some crazy co-worker go on a mini rampage of some GREAT new strategic and amazing idea.

Then you think to yourself:

Wait, I have GREAT new strategic and AMAZING ideas all the time! Maybe my co-worker isn’t so crazy after all because clearly I’m not crazy. Especially since I just thought up this great idea for Starbucks and it’s so good.

Ready, ready…

Clap your hands…

Get excited….

And…

Starbucks, can you please label your vegan options?

Corporate vegans go to your stores especially when we travel (cough cough… not sure if you noticed your strategy at airports and hotels, but I think it should be called "LOBBY SPACE COFFEE DOMINATION"…), college vegans order your crafted caffeine drinks for study sessions, and all vegans look at the food and have to dig through pamphlets or ask questions to single, double, triple, check if what you’re offering us is actually vegan.

It’s tiring and honestly I just don’t get. You’re Starbucks.

You literally created a language around a brown liquid that gets put into a recycled paper cup. “Yes I’ll have the tall, triple, grande, soy, lovely, venti, tasty treat, with an extra shot of espresso.”

You morphed big business out of coffee grinds. You made people feel special to order their morning latte or even know what a latte is. Your stores are full of health conscience people. You sell jazz and indie music. So why haven’t you labeled your vegan options?

Maybe label your vegan options on your website or list them in your iPhone App or even diversify exactly what you offer for vegan items. I personally think a green "V" next to every vegan item in your store is most appropriate, wouldn't take up a lot of marketing space and would keep everyone informed.

Listen I know times are tough and from what I’ve heard around town (or on NewYorkTimes.com with

So yes, it is a choice for us to go to your stores and order what you’re offering. But we’re customers too and we would appreciate a little help. We would appreciate the details and consequently the details might even keep us coming back for more.